


MONSTER! (jaesahi oneshot)

by ramkingvevo



Category: TREASURE (Korea Band)
Genre: Bittersweet, Demons, Discrimination, Fanfic, Fanfiction, Feminine Gay Character, Gay, Gift Fic, Hamada Asahi - Freeform, High School, High School Students, Homosexuality, Hybrid discrimination, Hybrids, Implied homophobia, Kpop fanfic, Kpop fanfiction - Freeform, M/M, Referenced Bullying, Yoon Jaehyuk - Freeform, kpop, mentions of bullying, mythical creatures, past bullying, treasure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28248393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramkingvevo/pseuds/ramkingvevo
Summary: ❝ ALLOW YOUR TIRED HEART TO FALL INTO MY EMBRACE, JUST TRUST ME. . . ❞The lives of two teenage boys are flipped completely upside down when they each discover the other's darkest secret. Learning how to cope with change, they come to surprising understandings about things that they never had the courage to ask questions about, and curiosity quickly develops into something much more as the two of them bond over hidden secrets that they work to hide each day.
Relationships: Hamada Asahi/Yoon Jaehyuk
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	MONSTER! (jaesahi oneshot)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [haeimjae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haeimjae/gifts).



> ― merry christmas, jarjar, i love you! <3

Asahi had never thought twice about Jaehyuk. They weren't friends, albeit not enemies either, —they were classmates, nothing more and nothing less. In a shared third period for Language Arts, they sat two seats away from one another, and for the life of him, Asahi just couldn't seem to recall any time that he'd ever glanced over in that general direction and suspected. . . Well, _anything_. Finding out that Jaehyuk was something less than fully human was shocking, to say the very least. Everything happened quickly, -in heartbeat, it seemed. It only took a few measly seconds for Asahi's entire world to be flipped on its axis.

To think that it had happened in a place so familiar to him was a hard pill to swallow. One of the hardest he'd ever had to choke down, in fact. Everything else that day had gone so normally, —better than normal, in some regard. Asahi had gotten a good score on a pop quiz that morning, his friend had shared potato chips with him at lunch that afternoon, and all he wanted to do was cap that slightly above average day off on a good note. That note being sitting at home with with a copy of a new manga release in a series that Asahi was completely enthralled by. It had a lovable, although stubborn, protagonist, fantasy elements, an intriguing plotline, a love interest that played a key component in the story and wasn't just there to be eye candy, and the art was beautiful, in Asahi's opinion. Overall, the story was something he genuinely enjoyed, and he'd been over the moon when he called the bookstore in the nearby mall to ask if they would be stocking the new release. It was on a whim, and he was almost positive that they wouldn't be due to how niche the main genre the series fell under was.

But, much to his surprise, he was told that they would, in fact, be putting the new release up for sale the next day at opening time. Asahi was ecstatic. He'd been following the series closely online, following fan pages, the author, the company it was published under, -he wanted to know anything and everything about it, wanted to keep up with it, and as a whole, Asahi just wanted to show support for his current favorite manga series. But only in the privacy of his own home, of course.

That evening after school, Asahi rushed to the bus stop to get to the mall. It was winter time, so the sun was setting much sooner and the atmosphere was growing colder by the day, but in Asahi's eyes, everything would be worth it in the end. Even if he was sensitive to cold weather, it would have taken a blizzard to have kept him away from the quaint little bookstore in the mall that day. In and out as quickly as possible, Asahi also purchased a pack of melon flavored mochi to eat while he read, and as he rode the bus back home, he found himself lost in thought. He was so excited to delve back into the story's universe, excited to reintroduce himself to all the characters, —main or otherwise.

Unfortunately, life has a way of playing tricks on people. Sometimes, the rug gets pulled out from underneath of us at the most unexpected times in the most obliterating ways, and we're left to shoulder all of it by ourselves, left to pick up the scattered pieces and scramble to make something new with them.

Asahi had been standing the whole ride. Being young and perfectly healthy, he never really felt the need to sit down on the bus, and even as a small child riding around with his mom, he'd never been one to sit, which he supposed had threaded over into his almost adulthood. So, Asahi stood with one set of slender fingers wrapped around one of three poles on the city bus, letting his mind wander. He didn't even notice Jaehyuk, his classmate, sitting just a few feet away. Not that that was inherently surprising, as Jaehyuk was quiet, made no move to make his presence known, and was frankly someone that preferred to be camouflaged amongst any group of people, blending in like a chameleon to hide in plain sight.

Unfortunately, when everything came to a halt and new people came flooding in like a flock of sheep to a shepherd, Jaehyuk decided that it was best to stand up allow someone else to have his seat. Many other young men and women did the same. Moving over to stand beside of Asahi, being sure to keep a distance between their hands on the pole that they were each using to steady themselves, Jaehyuk cringed at a middle aged woman's strong perfume. He wasn't sure if she was wearing a bit too much, or if it was just his own hypersensitive sense of scent being agitated by it, but either way, his eyes began to water almost immediately.

It was in moments like those that Jaehyuk really didnt enjoy being half Demon. With human blood to balance him out, he'd gotten only a sliver of the cool powers his mother had, like changing the atmosphere in a small radius. Sometimes, his Demon half really did feel like a curse. It was because of his Demon half that he was ridiculed at his last school, —bullied, really, although he hated using the word because of its severe implications. But, whether he liked using the word to describe what had happened to him or not made no difference in the end. The truth remained that he'd been taunted by upperclassmen all throughout his freshman year, -pushed into lockers, mocked in the halls, had small objects thrown at him in the middle of class. . . It was a daily occurrence. He was scolded for simple things like not walking fast enough for someone's taste or taking too long in a bathroom stall according to one person's opinion of the matter. He was even treated differently by the teachers and other school administration staff, and never once did he have to ask why.

He knew why.

He was something less than human, and although he was still high functioning, still able to be a member of society in a productive way, still able to form social contracts with everyone who surrounded him, -nobody seemed to care. The color of his irises and the slightly sharper point to his canines was enough to warrant torment. . .

Refusing as ask Asahi to switch him positions on the bus, Jaehyuk tried to brave it out. The perfume was strong, and by that point Jaehyuk was fairly certain that it wasn't just his sensitive sense of smell that had his eyes watering and itching like crazy. That lady definitely had on too much perfume.

Bringing his free hand up to his face, Jaehyuk made the devastating mistake of rubbing his left eye roughly with the side of his fist, attempting to rid himself of the tears that were welling in his eyes as a result of the agitation.

But he never could have guessed that something so benign would change the course of his life.

Everything happened so quickly, — _too quickly_. It was hard for either of them, Jaehyuk or Asahi, to wrap their minds around the sequence of events. One second Jaehyuk had taken both hands off the pole in order to wipe his watering eyes, attempting to keep his head down so that no one would catch sight of him, and the next the bus was halting and Jaehyuk was losing his balance.

It wasn't bad enough to send him crashing into Asahi like a tidal wave, but it certainly knocked the blond off balance. With his bag slipping out of his grasp, Asahi began to internally panic when both of his items spilled out onto the floor of the bus, and his manga was left lying face up.

Before Asahi could even make a move to grab for his things on his own, Jaehyuk was apologizing to him frantically and was on the ground collecting his things for him. Shame crackled through each cell in Asahi's body as his classmate paused just long enough to understand the implications of the cover, with two obviously male characters on it, one sitting atop the other's lap with their faces close together, -just a breath away from a tender kiss.

Asahi wanted to crawl inside of himself and hide away there. He wanted to retreat so far into his own body that he would just disappear from Jaehyuk's line of sight. Embarrased couldn't even begin to describe how he was feeling. It was so much more than just embarrassment; it was a deep, unbearable sense of dread and humiliation that set Asahi's fight or flight reaction into hyperdrive. . . And yet, even with red hot adrenaline coursing through his feeble veins, the blond couldn't bring himself to move yet. He felt like he was frozen in place by his own unease, just waiting for what felt like forever to see the expression on Jaehyuk's face.

In all actuality, it was just a few seconds, —ten or less in all, but it felt like an eternity. Burning shame, sparking embarrassment, blazing humiliation, raging dread, and then fear, anxiety, a million emotions that there simply wasn't enough words to describe. In the throes of it all, the last thing Asahi felt he needed was to discover Jaehyuk's very own secret. But, unfortunately for the both of them, they found themselves caught in the middle of one of life's unneeded games. Only this time, the universe seemed to be playing with with both Jaehyuk and Asahi's very _lives_.

When Asahi finally found the will to move, he did so quickly and haphazardly. Snatching the manga from Jaehyuk's hand, the blond left his mochi behind, not caring what happened to it. In that moment, Asahi didn't care what happened to the manga either, he just didn't want Jaehyuk to have any evidence of their meeting, or of anything else. He couldn't risk it.

Especially not when he'd just caught sight of a singular red iris behind a film of thin tears, peeking out from behind a faux brown. . . The mark of a Demon.

☃️

Asahi barely slept that night. Getting proper rest for the school day ahead of him was the least important thing on his mind, even as a student that was often described as a "golden boy." Coming from abroad to study at an international high school in South Korea was no small feat, and Asahi prided himself on his grades and his ability to self discipline for school, as well as most other areas in his life. That night, however, he felt he had nothing left to be proud of, as nothing seemed to be in his control anymore. Losing his grip on the reigns was absolutely terrifying, but he was in no position to stop it. He feared that he'd get to school the next morning and be met with the worst possible scenario, —that Jaehyuk had told everyone, finally bothering to speak up just to ruin Asahi's good image and make him a complete social outcast. The anxiety connected to those fears had the young male's stomach churning all night long, flipping in on itself over and over again each time that a new, progressively more horrid, prediction of the following day popped into his mind.

Jaehyuk was much the same. He found it hard to get any rest due to how high his levels of anxiety were, and when he finally tired himself out he'd only been able to get two or less hours of sleep before he was forced to wake up and prepare himself for school. Was Asahi going to tell? Did he already do so? Was Jaehyuk going to walk through the entrance that day and be met with piercing stares and people whispering about him as he passed them by in the halls? Was this the end of his peaceful high school experience?

As everything turned out, the both of them were much too concerned about their own lives and reputations to even consider damaging the other's. Their school days went by just as they should have, —teacher's explaining concepts to their classrooms full of students, incoherent chatter filling empty space. . . It was _fine_. Everything was okay. There wasn't anything to be scared of.

In the class they shared, Jaehyuk snuck glances Asahi's way, but never once did the blond do the same in return. He didn't have the courage to do so. Frankly, he was scared of what he would see staring back at him. . . All his life, Asahi had lived with the suppressed notion that all Demons and those with any drop of Demon blood in their veins were evil by nature, —incapable of kindness. living with the soul purpose of causing as much harm as possible. And that, unsurprisingly, wasn't the way Asahi himself wanted to live at all. Much the opposite, in fact, he just wanted to live the entirety of his life doing as little damage as he possibly could.

That left Asahi thinking, though. . . If that was true, then why hadn't Jaehyuk told? If he wanted to be destructive, if that was his only goal in life, then he should have told everyone Asahi's dirty little secret by then. He should have been blasting it over the intercoms that very morning, telling the tale of how he found the young blond with a boys love manga on a city bus, —he should have been telling every human being that would listen that Asahi was gay, that he was disgusting and not to be interacted with.

But Jaehyuk didn't do that. . .

Asahi pondered on that for the rest of the day, so much so that he had a hard time paying attention in his afternoon classes. If everything he'd always been told, everything he'd always thought to be true, was in fact correct, -then why wasn't Jaehyuk spreading that life altering information to every person in their school?

 _Maybe_ , he concluded after a lot of self-examination, _he's really just like me. He doesn't want to cause people harm where it's not needed_.

If that were the case, though. . . Then he'd been wrong about something for the entirety of his life, and frankly, that was a hard pill to choke down. Having to wonder if something he'd grown up being so certain of was incorrect all along made him feel lost, it made him realize that he'd have to wonder what other unfair biases he'd picked up along the way, implicit or explicit.

"Asahi," the blond jumped in response to his name being spoken in a voice that he didn't quite recognize.

Slamming his locker shut on reflex, Asahi looked over and felt his knees go weak. Jaehyuk stood before him, a desperate look in his eyes, dark brown with no hint of red anywhere behind them. For a split second, Asahi had to question himself. He had to wonder if what he'd seen on the bus yesterday evening was real, or if it was just a figment of his imagination. It felt real enough, he supposed, but there were no signs of anything being amiss as far as he could tell in the moment.

"Can we talk for a bit? Please?" Jaehyuk requested.

Asahi almost refused. He was scared of what "talking" meant, scared of what conversing with Jaehyuk would mean for himself, —for the both of them.

". . . Alright," he nodded his head softly, "but not here. Let's go somewhere else."

☃️

The two boys ventured to a small café a short walking distance away from their school. It wasn't very busy, with just a few customers sitting about the establishment, scattered like rose petals on the wind. They picked a table far in the corner without having to discuss it, and it seemed that the both of them were very much so on the same page with keeping themselves on the down, down low. A cup of green tea and a cappuccino later and the two of them were having an awkward, albeit important (and necessary) conversation.

"I'm sorry for knocking into you on the bus," Jaehyuk apologized, "I promise that it was just an accident. I never expected anything. . . Crazy to happen."

"It's okay," Asahi responded softly, bringing the starkly white cup filled with fresh green tea to his lips carefully so that he wouldn't spill any or burn himself on the hot liquid.

"I should also give this back to you," the raven haired male pulled his backpack closer to him on his seat, quickly unzipping the back pocket to pull out Asahi's package of melon mochi, —the pack he'd left behind when he rushed away the prior evening.

Sliding it across the table, Asahi gingerly brought his hand up to take it, slowly, as if he thought Jaehyuk was going to reach out and angrily snatch it back if he made any sudden movements.

". . . Thank you," the blond said in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

"No problem, " Jaehyuk replied, "but, um. . . I think we should also talk about-"

" _Please_ don't tell," Asahi cut in sharply, not meaning to come across as rude by any stretch, but unable to hold it in for any longer.

His eyes were brimming with tears, voice an octave away from cracking like he was going through the first stages of puberty all over again. Everything that had been building up for the past eighteen or so hours came spilling out in those three words, and Jaehyuk felt his heart break for Asahi.

He understood, perhaps better than anyone else.

"I'll do anything, just _please_ ," Asahi choked out, "please don't tell."

"I-I'm not going to," Jaehyuk stuttered, uncertain of how to react to Asahi's emotional response appropriately, "I won't tell, I promise. But you can't tell either."

"I won't," came a quick vow in response, "I promise. I'll never say a word."

Leaving it there didn't feel appropriate. After all, they were two teenage boys who knew one another's biggest secrets, and Asahi supposed that that had to count for something.

"So. . . You're a Demon?" The blond asked, lowering his voice to the point where Jaehyuk was forced to read his lips and strain his ears, even with his heightened sense of hearing.

"Half," the elder male answered, "my mom is a Demon, but my dad is human."

"Is being half human the reason you were able to come to our school instead of going to one of the schools designated for Mythics?" Asahi inquired, no judgement present, just simple curiosity.

"Yep," Jaehyuk nodded, "but still, when you enroll, you have to tell the higher ups of the school and the board of education. They tell you to make sure you hide things to the best of your ability because it'll make things easier for everyone, but that's just a nice way of saying that even if they don't kick you out for the student body knowing, they won't help if you're getting harassed over it, —by students or by staff."

"So nobody helps if people bully you for it?" Asahi questioned, a disgusted look crossing his sweet, soft features.

"They don't really care," Jaehyuk shrugged, finally taking his first sip of his drink.

"They tell us to hide it for a reason. Nobody wants to acknowledge the issues with the way they treat us, because they don't think we deserve respect anyway. If we get bullied, they think that it's our own fault for letting someone find out. It's always on us, no matter what."

"That's not fair," Asahi protested, "you're still a student under their care. They still have an obligation to protect you from things like that. They can't just pick and choose who they think deserves to be bullied."

"They do it anyway, whether it's fair or not," Jaehyuk answered blandly.

". . . Were you bullied for it somewhere else?" Asahi asked, treading as lightly as possible.

He wasn't asking to trigger any dark memories within Jaehyuk, rather, Asahi was looking for common ground. If they could relate to one another on a deeper level, they had a better chance of becoming genuine friends, and that seemed like it would be a good thing for the both of them in the long run. After all, it was probably a decent enough idea to make friends with the person who now knew his darkest secret. . .

"At my old school, someone ended up finding out. I'm still not sure how, but after it got around, they pushed me into lockers, said really vile things to me in the halls. . . Some people would even spit at me when I walked by," Jaehyuk reminescned unfondly.

"I can sort of understand," Asahi admitted, "—not completely, of course. . . No one was ever physical with me, not much anyway, but the things they said about me were hard to listen to. It was like it was their job to make me feel like I didn't deserve to be alive."

"And all that strength you thought you had at any time. . ." Jaehyuk trailed off in response, but Asahi quickly picked up where he left off.

". . . Feels like it's disappeared all of a sudden, as if they'd been right all along and all the things they said were just so true that you have to accept them as reality."

"So. . . You are gay then?" Jaehyuk inquired, but the blond didn't pick up any underlying tones of disgust, which was always the thing he feared most.

Seeing no reason to lie, he gave the truth in response.

"Yeah," Asahi nodded softly, "I am. . . But, this is the first time that I've ever told anyone that. Anyone other than myself in the mirror, anyway."

"Do you mind if I ask you questions about it? I don't want to be invasive or make you feel uncomfortable or anything, I just. . . I'm curious," Jaehyuk said, and though Asahi suspected that something else was very much so at play by the way he spoke, eyes flickering nervously with every word, —he knew it wasn't by any means his place to be presumptuous about anything of that nature.

"I don't mind," Asahi assured him, giving the raven haired male a passive smile.

"Then, when did you know? And, like, how?"

Of course, he had no way of being certain since he'd never come out to anyone before, but Asahi had a sneaking suspicion that those questions were ones he'd be answering a lot in the future.

"Well, I guess I always knew," he shrugged laxly, "at least a little bit. In the same way that I think everyone knows what they like as they go through the motions, we grow up, go out into the world, and most boys think "wow, that girl is so cute," but for me. . . I looked at the boy across from in my homeroom class and thought that, and I didn't know what that meant back then, really. I thought it was normal until someone told me that it wasn't."

"Was it scary when you realized that you were different?" Jaehyuk inquired further, just hoping that he wasn't crossing a boundary.

"Of course," Asahi replied, pausing for a second to take a light sip of his green tea, "it was hard. I spent the better part of my entire life wondering when the phase would end, wondering when I would just look at a girl and feel like the stars had aligned or something fancy like that."

"So you don't think there's even a sliver of chance that that'll happen one day down the line? That a girl will come along and make you realize that you've been wrong all along?"

When Jaehyuk asked those questions, it didn't come across as if he was trying to convince Asahi that he should hold out hope for those things. Rather, it seemed more so that Jaehyuk was attempting to tell _himself_ that he could hold onto those forlorn assumptions, if only for a little bit longer.

"I won't hold my breath for it," Asahi responded.

 _I will_ , Jaehyuk told himself, _and if push comes to shove, I'll staple my lungs shut if I have to_.

☃️

Sometimes, things don't happen for a reason. Of course, it's nice to believe that every action is done with the best of intentions, it's a peaceful existence to live by "this too, shall pass," and you can find comfort in the darkness if you trick yourself into thinking that the reason for its existence is simply so you can see the stars. But, more often than not, the universe has its own interests at heart. It has only its own motives to care for and foster, only its own desires to fulfill in the grand scheme, and humans are left to be silly little pawns for the entertainment of a formidable puppet master.

Through it all, Asahi and Jaehyuk became close. Perhaps that's part of what happens when two people unexpectedly find out one another's most well kept secrets. . . 

Still, despite that being the catalyst of their relationship, it was clear to see that the two of them were simply good for one another at the end of the day. Every moment they spent together drew them closer, pushed them more and more into one another's embrace. All the times where they laughed until their sides hurt and they were in tears, struggling for breath, all the times that something went wrong and they collapsed into one another's arms as if their knees couldn't stand their own weight anymore, —all the times that they were left feeling like they were the only ones who could possibly understand one another.

Maybe it was just their youthful naivete. 

Perhaps it was just the inner desire to be held, —to have someone to hold through the coldest of nights.

Whatever the case, their gravitational pull was almost inherent, as natural as moth to a brightly burning flame. But flames truly do _burn_. They scorch the wings of unsuspecting moths, they light them up without a second thought for the life they're snuffing out in the process. Fire doesn't care who it hurts, doesn't care what havoc it leaves in its unrelenting path. . . It's all about self satisfaction, all about the next spark. When one moth is gone, charred remains falling to the dirt as if its entire life had simply been leading up to that very death, —fire doesn't mourn. It simply waits for its next victim, or waits to burn itself out.

Asahi supposed that's what the world has to offer some. It'll chew you up and then spit you out, sloppy with saliva and unprepared for the harsh realities that the chilling winds will bring forth to you and the severed wings of all fallen angels.

"You're quiet tonight," Jaehyuk whispered as he played with Asahi's fingers absentmindedly, as if it was just in his nature, "what're you thinking about?"

_I'm thinking about when you'll let your fear of this, of these feelings, swallow me like a forest fire. I'm thinking about the day you'll explode like an erupting volcano and let your lava wash over me like a searing ocean wave. I'm thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong with this, about everything that's going to inevitably fall to pieces, and I'm thinking about how powerless I am to stop it all. . ._

"Nothing much," Asahi gave Jaehyuk a soft smile.

"I can smell your stress," the elder male stated lightly, and the blond's face fell at that admission.

"Is that really a thing you can do?" Asahi questioned.

"Hardly," Jaehyuk responded with a small laugh, "if the hormones surge enough I can pick up on them, but not much else. You just look like you're overthinking tonight."

"You know me, huh?" Asahi felt his heart clench as he looked into Jaehyuk's red eyes, —so painfully sincere.

"I like to think so," the raven haired male squeezed his hand gently, in a comforting manner as if to say 'I'm here for you, please understand that, even if I'm not sure if it's okay to say it aloud.'

Jaehyuk was achingly naive to believe that the world was still a good place, but Asahi's only desire in that moment was to protect that flame, to temper it, keep it at bay, —maybe stop it from blowing up on the both of them one day.

"Thoughts are just thoughts," Asahi shrugged everything off, "I just want to be here with you. I like the way your breathing sounds in a quiet room."

_I like the way your heartbeat sounds, like the way it pounds against the cage of your chest and reminds me that you're oh so alive, so full of potential and purpose, —I like the way you smell, I like the way you touch me, I like the way your fingertips trail over my skin like you know the roads that scatter it, and yet you're lost somehow, all in the same breathe. . ._

_I like you, Yoon Jaehyuk._

_So drown me in your flames._


End file.
